Around six hundred participants from over seventy countries attended the “First Global Conference on GMO Analysis”, which was held at Villa Erba in Como (Italy) from 24 - 27 June 2008.
The motivation to organise the Conference came from the success of the European Network of GMO Laboratories (ENGL), which is a pan-European network of enforcement laboratories where intense scientific debate is ongoing since 1999 on sampling, GMO detection, control samples etc. with the aim of solving technical issues, achieving scientific advancement and harmonisation of approaches in a very complex area.

Because many colleagues from all over the world had expressed their interest to join the activities of ENGL and since no international conference had ever been held on this issue, the members of ENGL encouraged the Joint Research Centre to organise the first event.
In 2006 I had an excellent scientific organising committee representing different regions of the world and stakeholders in place, ready to start planning the event. From the onset, we decided that the event should be scientific and that the participation ideally should be global. The feedback we received has convinced us that both these goals have been achieved.
In addition to the extremely high quality of the presentations, participants enjoyed a special discussion forum on biotechnology products related to testing.

In the exhibition area, participants discovered the latest equipment and techniques in the field of GMO testing and they learned about the activities of many EU institutes.
In addition, they were treated to an outstanding concert of the celebrated composer and piano player Ludovico Einaudi and eight musicians, and enjoyed a gala dinner in the villa of Luchino Visconti, the Italian movie director known from "Death in Venice".
We also post on this side the feedback received and you will see that the large majority of attendants were very enthusiastic about the conference, the scientific content and the organisation.

Guy Van den Eede,
Chairman Organising Committee

The 1st Global Conference on GMO Analysis is an initiative of the European Network of GMO Laboratoratories (ENGL) and
the European Commission, Joint Research Centre.

The conference was attended by more than 500 participants from
70 different countries